WHY FASTING IN YOUR 40S IS A TERRIBLE IDEA

Have you been told that skipping meals is the key to weight loss, energy, and fixing basically every problem you’ve ever had? While it’s being pushed as the ‘miracle cure’ for all ills, fasting in your 40s can cause more problems that it solves.

Let’s take a look at why women in their 40s need to skip the meal skipping approach.

WHY I DON'T RECOMMEND FASTING IN YOUR 40s

I speak with women all the time who skip breakfast or just have coffee/tea as ‘breakfast’. And let me tell you, this is a guaranteed way to set yourself up for exhaustion, stress, and weight gain!

One of the more recent diet trends is intermittent fasting (IF). And sure, there is early research that supports benefits in some populations. But when you’re looking at the average woman in her 40s, we’re looking at someone who:

• Is busy and stressed out
• May already be depleted in vital nutrients for energy production
• Is undergoing perimenopause, or is at least in the leadup to it
• Could have underlying issues popping up already including insulin resistance and thyroid dysfunction

So to put it simply, your body is not in the right space right now for you to add even more to that already full plate!

Much like traditional calorie restriction, there’s a domino effect when you skip meals. It goes a little something like:

• You skip a meal or just have coffee
• This puts your body into a sympathetic state (stress mode)
• This state increases your blood sugar and insulin levels, leading to more fat storage AND reduced ability to use those fat stores
• As a result, you start to develop insulin resistance, which means you’ll crave carbs and sugar 24/7
• The extra stress can also deplete progesterone, which feeds into a host of other perimenopause-related symptoms

And if that wasn’t enough, the restrictive nature of fasting can feed into binge eating, emotional eating, disordered eating patterns… aka all the things that we don’t want when trying to stay happy and healthy!

ANOTHER NOTE ON COFFE FOR BREAKFAST

No judgement – I learned this one the hard way myself. In fact, I did this for WAY too many years. I thought I was fasting, and that meant I was keeping my insulin levels & fat storage down. Well, I was very wrong (learn a bit more about the starting part of my journey here)

Coffee (yes, even black) stimulates a digestive response. That means it will impact your blood glucose & insulin levels, which puts you into fat storage mode. And of course, if you’re drinking that black coffee on an empty stomach and then not eating for hours afterwards? You put a massive strain on your adrenals and nervous system, pump up the cortisol and stick yourself into that same stress mode we just went over.

Don’t even get me started on coffee with sweeteners, syrups, whatever you add to it… long story short, coffee should never be on an empty stomach and should come AFTER a nourishing meal!

WHAT'S THE ALTERNATIVE?